


Not Any Mother's Son

by callmelyss



Series: The Stranger That You Keep [5]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Generational Trauma, Hux's Sad Childhood, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Leia POV, Light Side AU, M/M, References to Depression, That's Not How The Force Works, benarmie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 12:27:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16892604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmelyss/pseuds/callmelyss
Summary: She’s wanted to speak with Breha Organa countless times in the intervening years since she stared through that viewport, helpless as she’s ever been, and begged to no avail, no mercy, Vader’s grip tight on her shoulder, Tarkin’s unfeeling voice giving the order, the low hum as the weapon prepared to fire. Wanted to ask her if she’d done the right thing, this sacrifice, that evacuation, letting so many people lay down their lives for the cause. Wanted to scream at her and Bail for not telling her, for never telling her, howcouldthey not tell herthat. Wanted to show her the slumbering infant in her arms, soft-cheeked, gurgling, and to whisper,He’s one of yours, too, not just a Solo or a Skywalker or a Naberrie. I’ll make sure of it.But maybe never more so than she does right now, sitting in this small café and waiting for Ben.—Leia and Ben have a conversation (finally).





	Not Any Mother's Son

**Author's Note:**

> This installment picks up where "The Legendary Takers" left off. But here's a brief recap, since it's been a minute: 
> 
> On the way to see Leia on Chandrila (with a slight detour for illicit dealings), the crew of the _Falcon_ has to make an emergency landing on Takodana after a run-in with unidentified mercenaries. There, the boys meet Maz, who offers them a safe harbor. She and Han worry that someone might be looking for one or both of the boys. Later that night, Luke's lost lightsaber calls to Ben; he encounters the ghost of Anakin Skywalker and learns the truth about his family. He doesn't claim the lightsaber, however, understanding that it rightfully belongs to someone else and his new path will not lead to him becoming a Jedi. He sees visions both from the past and possible futures. Afterward, Han suggests Ben spend some time on Takodana so he can learn about the Force from Maz and others like her; Armitage insists on staying with him. 
> 
> I think that covers it! There's nothing new here in terms of the trauma dealt with—Leia's past and Armitage's childhood both make an appearance. There's no violence in the present action of the story, unless you count the annihilation of an unsuspecting pastry.

Leia’s people take her the long way to the rendezvous point. She doesn’t ask them to; it’s protocol, precaution, every extra minute of it like a grain of sand between her teeth.

They arranged the meeting in a neutral, out-of-the-way system, six planets and a handful of moons, sparsely inhabited, orbiting an ordinary yellow dwarf, well off the Mid-Rim’s primary hyperspace lanes. A backwater. Strategically unimportant with few profitable resources to exploit, although that didn’t save many systems during the War. It’s the sort of place where she might not be recognized, or at least not immediately—she’s yet to find the sacred corner of the galaxy where _no one_ knows her name. Ostensibly, she has diplomatic business here, a reasonable excuse, and true nearly everywhere. She does not lack for “diplomatic business” these days; she never has, not since the Galactic Concordance, not, in fact, since she was little more than a child, if ever.

There had been a time when she hoped the galaxy might settle, the rubble might clear, the fallen ships rest silent in their scattered graves, and she could make a quiet life for them on Chandrila. Or Naboo. Kriff, anywhere would have suited her, if she had Ben and Han and the surviving archives of her parents’ papers and library. There would be her family. There would be Alderaan’s legacy to preserve—more than enough, that work, a life’s worth, maybe two. She could have spent her days cataloging and annotating, writing and transcribing, re-translating the old epics. She could have listened to Ben playing in the yard and Han and Chewie working on that old wreck of a ship. Han—he could have come and gone more easily out of public scrutiny, and maybe they might have been happy. Instead, that hope became a fluctuating equation of afters. After the Senate is re-established. After the economy stabilizes. After the last of the Imperials are accounted for, tried. After the refugees have repatriated, or else been given new homes. After, after. 

While Leia abided, waited, swore and re-swore, the Force laid claim to Ben. The old lures: Han.

They bring her to the spaceport in an unmarked shuttle, her and her people in plain clothes, simple vests and tunics, muted colors, blending into the crowd of sentients at the midday market. She’s left most of her staff on Coruscant. Brought two bodyguards, a concession to Mon Mothma and Amilyn’s worries, although she has long hated a fuss and wanted, too, to protest that this was a personal matter, not a public one. There have been threats, they insisted. (There have always been threats.) But it’s poor courtesy and unworthy of a Princess—or a Senator—to grouse at people who only want to see you safe and well. Or so her mother once chastised her.

More than once, if she’s honest.

She’s wanted to speak with Breha Organa countless times in the intervening years since she stared through that viewport, helpless as she’s ever been, and begged to no avail, no mercy, Vader’s grip tight on her shoulder, Tarkin’s unfeeling voice giving the order, the low hum as the weapon prepared to fire. Wanted to ask her if she’d done the right thing, this sacrifice, that evacuation, letting so many people lay down their lives for the cause. Wanted to scream at her and Bail for not telling her, for never telling her, how _could_ they not tell her _that_. Wanted to show her the slumbering infant in her arms, soft-cheeked, gurgling, and to whisper, _He’s one of yours, too, not just a Solo or a Skywalker or a Naberrie. I’ll make sure of it_. But maybe never more so than she does right now, sitting in this small café and waiting for Ben.

She’s been waiting for Ben more than two months now, almost three since she received that first maddeningly vague holo from Han and another from Luke saying _something_ had happened, gone wrong with Ben’s Jedi training. _He’s okay_. I’ve _got him_ , Han reassured her two cycles later. Both a relief and an echo, tripping, the syncopation counter to her own pulse. 

In the middle of the night: _I’ve got him_. 

When he struggled with the other children, returned home with black eyes, bruised fists: _I’ve got him_. 

When the time came to bring him to the Temple, when he cried, when he messaged them, homesick: _I’ve got him_. 

And she could have, she might have railed, she could have swept out of the Senate chambers and raced to the spaceport and boarded her ship. She could have gone for him. Would have.

No one asked if she would.

Leia crumbles the corner of the sweetcake she’s ordered. Not hungry, only meaning, as she knows she must, to maintain appearances. Avoid suspicion. The tea she does drink: tarine, bitter and bracing, unsweetened. The café's proprietor, a squat sentient with pebbled, amber skin, brought them to her and returned to their spot behind the counter, reading the daily news on a piece of flimsi. The place is empty otherwise. They arranged that.

She’s spoken to Ben often enough since, since his father swooped in on the _Falcon_ as he has always done. They talk every other cycle when her schedule allows, but he’s reticent with her when they do. Almost timid. Flinching. Anticipating, dreading—what?

 _He’ll come ‘round_ , Han’s assured her. They’re speaking more, too, more than they have in years, mostly about Ben. Arguing, sometimes, about Ben. Sometimes it feels like they’re picking up where they left off. Most of those last arguments were about Ben. His future. Then, as now, Han arguing for something ordinary. Normal, as though that were ever a possibility. As though it would be fair or kind to pretend it was. _He’s not just any kid_ , Leia’s protested, so many times. _We can’t afford to treat him like one_.

 _No, he’s not just any kid_ , Han snapped, one of the last times they spoke before it ended, years ago. _He’s_ our _kid_. _He deserves the chance to grow up without some damned destiny hanging over his head_. _To make his own decisions_.

But it’s inescapable, isn’t it? As her own fate was. As Luke’s was. They didn’t ask for it, decided nothing; it happened _to_ them. Who their father, their birth father, really was. They bear that; Ben does, too, his grandfather's name.

And now he knows.

She feels him in the Force between she sees him, the gleaming, golden helix of him more recognizable, more known to her than almost anything in the galaxy. That energy had lived in her for a time, and that was the beginning of their connection, their understanding of each other, as innate and implicit and vital as her sense of her self. It’s different now, the quality of Ben’s light, flashing cooler shades of blue and green, but not _shadowed_ , not consumed as she feared when Luke told her what had happened.

( _Snoke_. The creature’s name. She’ll remember it. She’ll find it. She will.)

Ben’s approaching at a leisurely pace with another boy—or a young man, really, both of them young men—several inches shorter, with a mop of curly dark hair, familiar. Something about his face... Shara Bey’s son, yes. A prodigy at the Academy, they’ve said, one of Wedge Antilles’ best students, a credit to his mother. He knocks one arm into Ben’s side, prompting a laugh and a shy smile. And it’s been years, hasn’t it, since she’s seen Ben smile? He always looked so serious, sometimes morose, when she visited him at the Temple, not often enough, she knows.

It doesn’t quite slip off his face when he sees her, but it shifts. His eyes brighten; his lips shake. He comes to an uneasy stop in front of her, towering over her. They regard each other for a moment; she has to tilt her chin to look at him; he lowers his. The young pilot, whose name is escaping her, clears his throat and pointedly looks away, shoving his hands in his pockets and admiring some distant point on the horizon.

“Mom,” Ben says. And the uncertainty in his voice squeezes at her ribcage. 

“Here.” It’s not easy, at her height, getting her arms around him, but he stoops, helping, and finds her shoulder, pressing his face against the rough fabric of her shirt. 

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs.

“ _My son_. _”_ Leia lapses into Alderaanian, only finding the expression she wants there. She spoke it almost exclusively to Ben when he was an infant. They started using Basic with him when he was a toddler, and his vocabulary became a riot of the two—with a healthy dose of Shyriiwook mixed in. Talking to him this way feels as natural as communicating with him through the Force. As private, too, thanks to the Empire, thanks to— “ _For what?_ ”

He pulls back, sniffling. Shrugs, inexpressive, and scrubs at his face. “ _For…all of this._ ”

“ _None of this is your fault._ ” She shakes him slightly. “ _Understand me? None of it_.”

He looks away. “ _I should have_ —“

“ _No,_ we _should have, Ben_. _It was our job to make sure this didn’t happen_.” She doesn’t blame Luke, in particular. Has felt his regret, immense, drowning, between them when they speak. It’s all of them, for thinking it was done, that they’d done all they needed to do, that it was over, the long work of it finished and everyone safe and peace assured. But she, she knows that it doesn’t end. There will always be more to do, more to fight for, and they cannot afford to rest. Not when there’s so much at stake. 

There is no after.

She drags her gaze away from Ben with some effort, seeing the doubt in his face. Directs her attention to the young pilot, instead. “Thank you for bringing him here, Captain,” she says. “Dameron, is it?”

He flashes an almost blinding smile.“Yes, ma’am, Poe Dameron. I’m still a cadet. But when General Antilles asked if I might log some extra flight hours, I couldn’t say no. Couldn't resist helping out an old friend.” He winks at Ben, who blushes.

And there had been, Leia remembers, more than a few summers on Yavin. May have been as well for the young Padawans. Luke hadn’t kept them apart, cloistered, not like they had been before. He wanted them to see people, know people, even as he did his best to protect them, give them a safe place to learn the ways of the Force. _He did his best. He did._ She raises an eyebrow at Poe, amused.

“But, uh. I’ll give you two some privacy. An honor to meet you, ma’am. I’ll see you at the ship, okay, Benny? Okay.” He makes a hasty retreat, leaving her alone with her son.

Or, more or less alone. Her bodyguards linger in the background as always, pretending they’re not there, not hearing anything, not witnessing anything private. But she’s grown almost used to that. Can even halfway forget them sometimes. Close enough to being alone.

“Care to sit?” Leia gestures at the other chair. Suddenly unsure. If Ben’s expression, the slight quavering of him in the Force, is anything to go by, he feels the same. He hasn’t reached for her there yet, seems to be holding himself apart, away. She can feel him, sense him, without effort but it’s not the communing, the unfettered connection they shared when he was a child.

“Thank you.” He had had solemn manners even then, even when he was volatile, confused and often hurt by the thoughts and feelings he heard, prone to tossing his toys and the furniture around his room. He spent too many nights sitting in stuffy banquet halls, not allowed to run or play. _The serious little prince_ ,  her colleagues called him. He’d hated it. Had thrown more violent tantrums after those events. Eventually, she stopped taking him with her, wanting to spare them all that. Recalls the way he always curled up, his face tear-stained, among the splinters and spilled stuffing. _It’s not an easy world you live in_ , Han reminded her when she wanted him to bring Ben back to Coruscant. As though Leia may have forgotten. As though she isn’t the only one still living in it, unforgiving as it is.

Leia wants to ask him all the mundane questions other mothers get to ask. _How was the trip? Are you eating enough? (You look thin.)_ And, most importantly: _When are you coming home?_ But that is not, at least not entirely, why they’re here. There is the matter of what Ben learned on Takodana. The fact he means to stay there and on the _Falcon_ , where he might be attacked by mercenaries, outside of her protection, outside those unforgiving spheres she inhabits. And, not least of all, the boy, the stowaway with the mysterious past, mixed up in all of this somehow, his role still unclear to her.

“His name is Armitage,” Ben says softly. Picking up the thought. And it’s always been extraordinarily difficult to keep him out. “Dad calls him Red.”

She snorts, more amusement than derision. _Why call someone by their proper name when you can give them a new one?_ _That old pirate will never change_. And there may be something comforting in that, something steadying, even when it needles her. Or maybe especially then. “Of course he does.” 

“He—“ Ben says, meaning Armitage again. His presence in the Force suffuses with an unfamiliar glow. He blushes and pulls back, hiding it, but it’s already rosy-clear what it means, what Ben _feels_ , and that hits her, too, a pang, the reality of it, something else she might have missed, something she’s been missing. 

Han had mentioned it, although obliquely. _The two of them are attached at the holster_. Added, quickly: _Figuratively speaking, I didn’t give ‘em blasters_.

She heard the unspoken  _yet_.

“Show me?” Leia asks. _All of it_. Extends her hand across the table. Strictly speaking, they don’t need to touch to do this, but it does make it easier for her. And more than that, she can’t remember the last time he held her hand—on Chandrila?—that his days of her holding her hand are almost past, if not yet completely.

He hesitates before accepting it. It’s immediate, that connection in the Force; it had felt like a problem at times, not being able to keep each other out, not being able to shield her worries from him. Luke, she knows, also struggled with it; there were things he would have liked to keep from Ben and to keep Ben from, if only in his own mind, his own thoughts.

“Yeah, well,” Ben says, rolling his eyes before he closes them, strengthening their link. “We all know how well that went.”

It coats the surface of his thoughts like oil spreading over water, the clinging sense of betrayal. Anger. Roiling waves. Storms. Splitting stone. _Why didn’t you_ tell _me?_  

Weariness fills her. _We were going to tell you. When the time was right_.

 _When?_ A tremor runs through him in the Force. Seismic. Dangerous. Also fragile. _When it was convenient?_

 _When you were old enough._ The three of them argued about it, her and Han and Luke, the timing of it. Whether he should ever know, if he wouldn’t be happier, his life better, if he didn’t. In the end, it had been a compromise, waiting for when he reached his majority, old enough to understand, to decide what to do with the information. Although she doesn’t know what to do with it most days herself, except bury it deep. Not think about it. That cold hand gripping her shoulder. Tarkin’s voice. The sound of the weapon readying. That beam of light. How fast it’d been, too fast to blink or move or breathe. How it rattled through her, the aftershock. How she couldn’t cry until later, much later. Didn't have time to cry. _I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Ben. We should have._

“Mom,” Ben said aloud, pulling her out of it, an icy, murky sea. He’s squeezing her hand. “Mom, it’s okay.”

He had done that more than once when he was small, the days when she could shut herself in, when she shut the world out, however briefly she could, when the memories came tumbling over her. When she smelled a specific kind of sweetroll, dense and rich and covered in fine sugar. When she saw women of a particular age, their hair wreathed around their heads with ribbons or flowers. When she felt mountain air on her face. They didn’t give her the anniversary—and rightly, it didn’t belong to her but to the dead—but she had other days, blurring, gray days, and when he was small, Ben would come to her and put his hand over hers and trill in Alderaanian: _It’s okay, mama. It’s okay._

“ _You be angry,_ ” Leia tells him in that language when she’s composed herself again. It doesn’t take long; it never does. She learned from the best. “ _As long as you want. There wasn’t a good time to tell you. I would rather have made it—not true, if I could_. _I would have._ ”

“ _I know._ ” Ben swallows and bows his head, hair falling over his eyes. He worries his lower lip between his teeth. Still angry, yes, and good, they deserve it. But every other feeling, too, afraid and ashamed maybe most of all. 

She squeezes his hand back, making him look at her, and says, as firmly as she’s said anything, given any speech, any order, “You’re _nothing like him_ , you understand?”

He looks up her. “I think I might be a little,” he whispers. The dread of it in his eyes, his face, his voice.

Through the Force, she sends him, as she did he was younger and suffering from bad dreams, soothing images, sounds. Burbling water. The crunch of fresh snow. The delighted face of a small boy rotating a set of glass baubles around his head. She tells him: _you did what he never could. You resisted._

All on his own. When he never should have had to.

She doesn’t quite understand the flicker of recognition in him or all the images that follow, that he gives to her: Han embracing him in the cockpit, the smell of his jacket, the comforting thrum of the _Falcon_ under his feet; Chewbacca picking him up for a hug and spinning him, his feet not touching the ground; the hill where Luke re-founded the Jedi Temple overrun with younglings chasing each other and laughing, shrieking, Ben in their midst; and lastly, another boy, with red hair and green eyes, the boy curled around him in a narrow bunk, walking beside him through a forest, sitting across the Dejarik table from him, a frown of concentration on his grave face. _Armitage_.

“So that’s him?” Leia asks, and Ben startles, dropping her hand, severing the link. 

His ears go red under his hair. “Yeah, that’s him.” Voice hushed, raw.

“And he’s—“ _Back on Takodana?_ she means to ask.

He nods, jerky, evading her eyes. Still embarrassed. “Dad thought it was smarter.”

 _The kid has been through something. A kriffing lot of something_ , Han told her, when they spoke. He described a little of what Armitage had told him, a place called the Academy, its rules and strictures, the brutal way the cadets were set against each other. How he had seen Armitage fight. 

And it is everything she’s feared, everything she needs to know more about, in detail. _You’re not interrogating a seventeen-year-old._ Han’s face had a familiar quality. _You’re going too far, Princess,_ that look said. _Don’t forget to be a person once in a while_.

That one had stung—for years. Still does, if she's honest.

 _We wouldn’t interrogate him_ , she insisted. They use much gentler methods than that. _We would help him remember_. _Get the details we need._

 _You wouldn’t mean to_ , _I don’t doubt it,_ _but I’m not letting you take a kid into custody_.

 _He has no family, no identification. Technically, that makes him our concern anyway_. Another war orphan, whether the war orphaned him or everything that followed did hardly mattered. They never made much progress on that, although everyone from most reactionary Centrists to the most radical Populists used them as political currency, herself included. Although she at least introduced legislation to _help_ them, as often as she could. If it was unfeeling to take advantage of Armitage’s legal status, she would at least make sure he was well looked after. Treated decently and given a new home: on Coruscant.

But Han had surprised her. _If the kid needs a guardian to speak for him, he’s got one._ Gruff in a way that he was only when trying to mask some strong feeling.

_What, you?_

_Me? ‘Course not. I meant Chewie. He loves that scrawny little tinkerer_. _And I_ _bet even your intelligence agents would think twice before crossing an angry Wookiee_.

We’re not the enemy, she had wanted to protest, not a new difference of opinion between them, given how Han Solo feels about governments of any kind, especially the overreaching kind (and all of them are, in his view). But she let the matter rest.

Ben is studying her, thoughtful. “You want to know more about where he comes from,” he said.  Seeing through her, again. Always. “You have questions.”

“He could help us,” Leia tries. “We could help each other. There’s nothing to be afraid of—we would treat him well.”

“No need for that.” He extends his hand again. “Here, _I_ can show you.”

 _I’ve already heard from your father—_ she starts to explain, but he shakes his head. _I can_ show _you_ , he repeats, impatient, and, humoring him, she takes his hand. 

She's submerged immediately in another mind. Not Ben’s mind, not the colors and textures and flavors she knows so well. Not his memories. Someone else’s. And it’s overwhelming, the flurry of images and sounds and snatches of conversation, the sterile smell of a spacecraft, the omnipresent chill, the tastelessness of nutritional paste. She has one view of the stars through the viewport, distinct, and it’s no configuration or perspective she recognizes. _The Unknown Regions_ , at a guess. As they've thought.

It shifts, and she’s in a kind of dormitory, rows upon rows of little cots, shivering children in thin gray pajamas, many of them cuddled two to a bed, their whispers carrying from one end of the room to the other, _an_ _hour until bed check, thirty minutes until bed check, ten minutes until bed check_ , and when the countdown ends, they all scurry, almost synchronous, back to their beds, bare feet slapping durasteel, blankets yanked hastily over them, eyes squeezed shut. A blinding light flashes around the room, there’s the sound of a counter clicking, steady, until it pauses, and then of a struggle, kicking against sheets, soft, frightened whimpers, someone being struck. The memory of being grabbed by the ankles, dragged out of the warmth and into the cold, pain cracking down her legs.

Then, they’re sitting at lessons, children at their desks, all wearing uniforms, all with standard, droid-cut military hair. Their backs perfectly straight, attention rapt, almost quivering from it, as they’re questioned. Hands flying up to deliver answers, precise, quick. Recitations. Equations. On the hour, they stand, face a blood-red banner at the back of the room, and say in monotone unison: _We will defend the glory of the new Empire, which will rise again from the ashes of the shameful New Republican regime…_

They’re in the mess hall, waiting in line for food—hungry, always hungry—when shouting breaks out in the middle of the room. Stomping boots. Signaling that again, yes, it’s time, _it's time_. At the center of the mob: two adolescents, no more than thirteen or fourteen, circling each other with knives. They feint at one another, feet moving quickly. Not meeting. But eventually, one, a girl with blonde hair, stumbles and her opponent falls on her, blade flashing. Leia gulps against her gorge rising, although the scene hasn’t diminished her hunger. The other students descend on the victor once the blonde girl is still. They yank up his sleeve, exposing his bicep; they start to carve. 

She emerges from it, shuddering, gasping, still clutching her son’s hand.

“Sorry,” Ben says. His eyebrows flinch together, sympathetic. “It’s a lot, I know. I was sick when he showed me.”

“He showed you,” she echoes. Not understanding. “Armitage. He let you in his head?” Must have, for it to be so vivid, so _complete_ , and she can still see the pattern of the stars. Maybe—

“Yeah. Well, some of it’s from his dreams. Nightmares. Hard to keep those out.” He worries the edge of his sleeve, and there’s the scene from earlier: the two of them nestled together like spoons in a drawer. “We, um. We just sleep, I promise.”

She doesn’t answer, still shaken by what she’s seen and by this admission. _He showed me_. 

“How?” she asks finally. Stunned. “How did you convince him to—?” Even if she had Force-sensitive interrogators, they’d have to break their way in to even the most cooperative minds. No one voluntarily gave that up, their deepest secrets. That privacy. 

“He didn’t convince me,” another voice interrupts, startling them both. “I offered.”

The commotion that follows reminds her that they are not, in fact, alone in the café, because all at once her people are on their feet, blasters drawn and pointed at the newcomer standing in front of her at the same time Ben is standing, pushing the boy—Armitage, yes, red hair, green eyes, skinny as a strand of monofilament—behind him, and stretching his hand toward them. All three of them are shouting; the café’s proprietor dives behind the counter, probably thinking a shootout is about to break out in their establishment.

“ _Enough_ ,” Leia says. Not raising her voice, only letting it cut through the hubbub, and the noise quiets. “Gena. Kelex. Everything is fine. Resume your posts. Go buy something from that poor sentient. Some tea, maybe. Ben, let them go.” She turns to the other boy, who hasn't made a sound; he’s wearing a tech’s jumpsuit and a t-shirt emblazoned with brightly colored letters, not Aurebesh. A dusting of freckles crosses the bridge of his nose. His expression flickers between curiosity and wariness. “You must be Armitage.” 

Ben is still halfway between the two of them, one hand hovering over Armitage’s middle as though he isn’t sure what to do. “You were supposed to stay on the _ship_ ,” he hisses at him.

He shrugs. “I got bored.” Yawns. A certain affected arrogance in that. Although he’s not quite mastered his eyes yet, the way they dart between her and Ben. The way he looks at Ben.

Who is scowling at him. “Banthashit, you downloaded a whole technical library earlier.”

She clears her throat; they both turn to look at her. “I believe you were supposed to stay on the _planet_ ,” she reminds them. “Now, please sit. We’ve attracted more notice than we should already.” They won't have much time now. Someone will have seen. And she only had an hour to begin with.

An hour with him after all this time.

They both obey, Armitage with a murmured, _yes, ma’am_. She doesn’t miss the way his right hand finds Ben’s left under the table, how they interlace neatly, easily, unthinking.

“So, what’s the real reason?” Leia asks. Watches him shift under the weight of her stare, although his posture stays agonizingly perfect, the only flaw some defiance or haughtiness in the tilt of his chin. Maybe both. He’s a curious presence in the Force, too, unaware of her attention, not sensitive to it, but bright.

“I—“ he says. Sounding less blasé now. He frowns. “I don’t like to be left behind, that’s all. Not when Ben is elsewhere.”

And it is something, to see her son go soft-eyed at this admission, irritation vanishing. _You didn’t tell me they were a couple of puppies_ , she’s going to chastise Han the next time they speak. _This is more than attached at the holster_. _This is—_

“Yes, I’ve heard you two are somewhat inseparable,” she remarks dryly, if only to the see them redden. “But you were saying. You offered to share your memories with Ben—with us. You understand what that means?”

Armitage nods, and he has such a serious face, this boy, even more so than Ben’s. And everything lurking in his eyes, everything she _knows_ is there now, having seen it. It makes her uneasy; it makes her want to send him away; it makes her want to cup his cheek, too. Then, his gaze flicks to the table, and his stomach growls, interrupting. He flushes. “Er, pardon me. Are you going to eat that?” he asks, indicating the sweetcake, sitting neglected in front of her.

Leia pushes the plate over to him. Watches him break it in half and offer a portion to Ben before wolfing down his own, the way only a teenager can. But then— _hunger_. Her experience with it is limited, the life she’s led, although there had been badly stocked bases, nights spent out in the cold and dark, the privations of war. Still, she knows, nothing like that constant, gnawing ache, slow, enduring starvation. 

“Thank you,” he says when he’s finished. “You wanted to know why I showed Ben—I trust him.” He shrugs again, as though it’s simple. “That’s why I offered. And we thought maybe if.” Doesn’t finish the thought, but she can follow the line of it. _We thought if I showed him, if it worked, if it was enough, you would let us stay together_. 

They’re both watching her, sober-eyed, not quite hopeful. Asking _her_ , she realizes, to let them do this, Takodana and the _Falcon_ and whatever follows, to not separate them. Not send Ben to a family estate to keep him safe, not bring Armitage back to Coruscant. And there is always her internalized sense of it: what’s best, what benefits the whole, what _should_ be done, her father’s voice, the need to serve the greater good, compromising nothing. All it’s been, all her life, the right choices, not the easy ones. That would demand, certainly, for her to take this boy with his unmistakable Imperial drawl—whose hand Ben is clutching under the table, white-knuckled, as though he might be ripped away, as though _she_ might—to testify before the Senate. To tell them all he’s seen and experienced, to _convince_ them, yes, that something is out there. Here is the proof, this child with the emblem of this new threat carved into his arm, look at it; plaster that across the Holonet, across every screen on every world from Coruscant to Ryloth. Give him up to them, to dissect and study.

Leia could do that; she could draw both of them into this, the way she was drawn into it, younger than they are now. It would be effective. It may even be necessary. She could make that choice for them.

She lets out a breath and out with it: duty. The greater good. The part of her that wants to put them both behind the thickest walls she can find until this passes. After. “If we need to know more,” she begins.

“Yes,” Armitage says. Almost too quickly. Maybe desperate. 

She studies them. How young they both are. And yet, all of this.

“Whoever’s behind this, they’ll be looking for you, if they aren’t already,” she says. “Both of you. We still don’t know—“

 _We still don’t know about Snoke_.

“We’ll be careful,” Ben assures her. “And we won’t be alone.”

“You won’t be,” she agrees. And she does, she trusts Han and Chewie. It’s not the same, not like being able to confirm for herself, the way she did when Ben was an infant, breathing gently in his crib, that he was safe, he was well. That no one had taken him. That no one would ever take him. But he wouldn’t be safe, either, she understands, where she could keep an eye on him. They haven’t accomplished that, not yet.  _I've got him._

Then, seeing their attention snap to her, she relents, “Okay.”

A pair of smiles greets her: Ben’s broad, easy, and Armitage’s tentative, as though he’s not sure how to manage it properly. And he jumps, almost recoiling when she reaches over to touch his free hand. _Look after Ben_ , she tells him, as clearly as she can, not certain if he’ll hear, if he’ll understand. Except it’s there, in the expression on his face, solemn, a slight nod, accepting. His eyes meeting hers.  _Do that, and I’ll stand between you and whatever comes_.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Notes:
> 
> Alderaan is space Puerto Rico, I don't make the rules. The pastry Leia gets emotional about (not the one Armitage horks down) is a version of Pan de Mallorca. 
> 
> The story will pick up again in January with Ben and Armitage's adventures on Takodana.
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Say hi on [twitter](https://twitter.com/callmelyss1) and tumblr (for now).


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